Rick Meints

While I never thought of Delecti as using much Chaos to corrupt the dryad, your story is great and I think it will be a lot of fun, which is all that matters.

Delecti has been defending and expanding his marshy realm for centuries. He has mastered the art of luring in his victims through all manner of enticements. Here's some of what Greg and I wrote for Tales 19: Upland Marsh Encounters This article is designed as a set of general guidelines on what intruders will encounter when they enter Delecti’s domain. The Marsh is an ever-changing physical environment. Islands drift, ruins slowly sink, undead shamble around. Maps are notoriously unreliable. The Upland Marsh is a mishmash of mucky islands and rocky outcroppings surrounded by a slow moving murky sludge. Technically, the Creek and the River both run through it, but their routes are a deadly series of small lakes connected by rivers of crud. Think of the Cypress swamps and bayous of Louisiana. Picture moss covered trees. You are there. Now leave. Traveling through the Marsh Ground movement within the Marsh is half speed at best. Normal beasts of burden and all but the best trained mounts refuse to set even a single hoof into it. Riding such a mount would be impossible, regardless. Only the Lismelder with their clodhopping skills, and the ducks with their natural affinity to the terrain can move at close to normal speed. Delecti’s corrupted servant Rihalya protects her master with her perpetual cloak of mist. Thus, visibility is limited to roughly 30 meters or so during the day and perhaps as little as 1-5 meters at night. She rises to her thickest as part of the preparations for expanding the Marsh. She precedes the foul dance of the Daughters of Darkness whenever they choose to venture out of the Marsh as well. Troll Darksense is basically useless, as are most forms of extended vision, unless magically enhanced. The air is filled with all manner of spooky sounds and odd odors. At times, the stench of decay can be choking. Few beings that enter the Marsh ever forget its distinct smell. Most flying creatures also avoid the airspace over the Marsh, but trained flying mounts could be ridden. All but intelligent mounts would never dare to fly down into the mist let alone attempt to land in the Marsh unless forced. A Few General Notes on Delecti’s Undead Delecti's undead follow a largely automated defensive scheme, unless Delecti focuses on a specific battle and takes direct control of his forces. He occasionally prefers to have his undead capture powerful people by subduing them. Everyone else is lethally dealt with. Drowning is a favorite attack because it insures a much more intact corpse. There are a number of powerful undead beings that rule over small regions of the Marsh. While they have sworn an oath of servitude to Delecti, they are given a relatively free hand to do what they want in their own little realms. The undead minions of Delecti decay at a very slow rate, possibly over centuries. It has been observed that the zombies decay at an accelerated rate while outside of the Marsh. Most of the zombies that have rotted away have continued their unbroken record of service as skeletons. In the end, no one other than Delecti is confidently sure what he is up to. Some outsiders believe that nothing escapes his eye inside his Marsh. Others believe he takes little interest in intruders unless they are extremely powerful and/or pose a threat directly to him or his realm. Attacking his Blackthorn trees, major Humakti assaults, or entering his ruin always get his undivided attention. The forces he can muster if needed are considerable.

Delicti welcomes any and all such challenges to his realm. Those zombies, ghouls and other undead aren't going to replenish their ranks without your help!

Greg Stafford and I spoke about Delecti at great length over many years. Of all the things in Glorantha I have loved and appreciated, Delecti was kind of my personal obsession to understand. We emailed and spoke about him extensively, culminating in the lengthy info published about him in an article Greg and I wrote for Tales of the Reaching Moon magazine back in the 1990s.

While I am sure that somewhere, someone might have said that Delicti was a vampire, that's not the version of Delecti Chaosium has ever published. WB&RM, last updated as Dragon Pass said it quite succinctly: Delicti the Necromancer lived in one of the chief cities of the Empire of the Wyrms Friends. Delecti's practice of his arts led to a curse falling upon the city; it declined into ruin, and the surrounding countryside became a terror-filled swamp. By his arts, Delicti achieved a gruesome form of immortality; he was able to transfer his spirit into a freshly slain corpse and live through it until the rotting flesh could no longer sustain him; at that time he would seek another corpse. Delecti's greatest military asset was his ability to create and maintain armies of zombies.

Delicti isn't a vampire, nor is he an homage to count Duckula. Delecti is a necromancer. While his first appearance in a published product is WB&RM in 1975, Greg actually started writing about him years earlier.

The third printing is not going to happen for some time.

We didn't expect people would keep the single sheet cover wrap on the item, much like they wouldn't keep the shrink wrap on the item. All of the info on it is on the GM Adventures book. We don't have a PDF of the cover wrap that would print out correctly onto cardstock, and that piece of cardstock would be bigger than 11x17, so it would have to be a special piece of stock that most people couldn't easily print, certainly not on most home printers.

The last edition of the MiG had generic glorantha publications in it, so yes to looking for that as well as Hero Wars/HeroQuest publications. I've got the lists for HW and HQ publications by Issaries and Moon Design.

IN case anybody is wondering, I have gone through all of the White Dwarf magazines pretty thoroughly. If I didn't include an issue it is probably only because all it had in it was a review, and I'm not really chasing down all reviews. I have also gone through all issues of Dragon, Different Worlds, all Judges guild magazines, Heroes, Tales, and Adventurer. High priority stuff includes cults, spells, creatures, adventures, history, geography, and similar.

If they are in an issue of a magazine that has other game content I sometimes include reviews, but they are not a priority for me. There are lots of magazines that had just a review in them and it's not something I think I will include.Many of them are also short. I'd rather have people tracking down game content articles.

Thank you. I have all the first 112 issues of WD and have gone through them all. Oddly, my original list had issue 17 listed instead of issue 14. Thank you for catching that error in the summary list. My detailed listing for Issue 14 is fortunately correct.

Sadly, that's not a term I have seen used elsewhere.

I always enjoy reading RuneQuest reviews. They often give some cool insights into how the game was generally received. I haven't focused on chasing them down myself because they are spread far and wide and don't tend to have that much game related stuff in them (spells, creatures, etc) so having others do that legwork is much appreciated.

One of the most sensitive issues concerning labelling something as "non-canonical" is the negative connotations the word carries for many people. We aren't trying to offend people, especially the creatives that have been gloriously exploring glorantha for potentially decades. Regardless of the best of intentions, if we label something as non-canonical we inevitably get pushback on why we are calling somebody's baby "ugly". It has caused anger and offense when all we are trying to provide is clarity. It's an unenviable position to be in. No, actually it sucks. It truly sucks. We've seen people almost rage quit over it. It doesn't ease our efforts to build a friendly and welcoming community. If I talk about something I know about I will try to say where I am getting the information from. I'd rather shed light than curse the darkness (unless Trolls are involved). I like pointing people to books that might give them more info or food for thought. If it's a small bit of info I'll even try to cut and paste the few sentences.

There are several potential problems at work here, and there are no easy ways to prevent them from happening without subjecting these forums to radical change. Here are some of my thoughts on the matter: How much a creator of material cares about Gloranthan Canon covers the whole spectrum. Some don't like how things were written and want to totally reimagine that material. Others are mindful of past precedent and profoundly want their material to not deviate from Canon. How much a consumer of material cares about Gloranthan Canon covers the whole spectrum. If you want to have your campaign line up Canon I strongly suggest you stick to just using the latest publications. Canon is not easy to define precisely. The reasons are many, including slow transformation of information over time as well as radical changes made swiftly. Also, some time shortly after 1983 when Avalon Hill got involved there came a point when no one person or team of people was in charge of enforcing Canon, even for "official" material. Greg Stafford sometimes was incredibly mindful of past works, and other times he simply didn't care. The same could be said about most other writers as well. A LOT of writers have been involved since 1978. Checking your "new" material against 40 years of extant material now borders on the impossible. I would have probably said the same thing 10 years ago, and maybe even 20 years ago. When I say a LOT of material, I mean that more than 10,000 pages of Gloranthan material has been written in "official books" since 1978.

Then why make the comparison? I feel this is comparing Apples and Oranges. Comparing the core rulebook of RQG, or the Bestiary, or the GM screen pack to a campaign pack like Sartar: KoH or Pavis: GtA when they have very different purposes seems odd. I could see comparing the RGQ core book with the HQG core book, but a rule book and a campaign book have very different content goals. It would be like saying the Argan Argar Atlas fails because it doesn't have enough rules content in it, or spells in it as opposed to the rulebook. The same could be said with comparing the Guide to Glorantha with Snakepipe Hollow and saying the Guide fails because it doesn't have enough scenario material it with stats. I can see why you like the HQ scenario books a lot, and am not trying to argue over whether you prefer them, but saying the RQG core rulebook pales in comparison to them is a very different thing.

What doesn't line up "perfectly"? And as for the partial spine print, perhaps do what you did with the Masks GM Pack and simply turn it around.

The paper wrap on the GM screen pack wasn't meant to be there for all eternity. The wrap was added to make the GM Screen Pack a more sellable item if bought all by itself.

That is very possible.

It would be awesome to see it win the award twice.

I seriously doubt the slipcase set for BtMoM will have sew on patches with it. If patches are done, which is very possible, they would be sold separately.

I'm surprised that you feel the HeroQuest material has more mythological and cultural material than the CURRENT RuneQuest products. I can see why you feel Sartar: KoH has more depth than an RQ2 or RQ3 supplement, but I don't think that will hold true for anything published for RQG. Sadly, while sales of HQ remain a fraction of RQG sales, we can't match the art budgets.

We might be able to put a nice print of the box cover, with the text, for sale on RedBubble.

The only Pendragon original art we have is a few of the simpler black and white pieces used in a few of the books.